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with charcoal people? (#teampropane.) I have seen it recommended that rather than spread your charcoal evenly once in the barbecue pit, you will want to dump it all to one side so that half the grate is over direct heat and half is cooler. While all this is going on, your steak has reached room temperature and you’ve seasoned it as above. Do you have a grill thermometer? If not, you’re going to want a grill thermometer. Before slapping steaks on metal, you want the grill at 500 degrees. Be sure to keep the grill covered so that the heat does not escape. When ready to cook, we are going to go for four bursts of two minutes each for a medium-rare steak. (You can take it back to a minute or one minute and 30 seconds for rare, though the height of the grate from the charcoal and the size of the steak are going to have a say in all this. It might take experimentation, so if there is someone at the cookout that you don’t like, cook theirs first.) The process of cooking on a charcoal grill will look like this: Once the pit reaches 500 degrees, open the lid, add your steaks to the charcoal side, close your lid immediately, and grill for two minutes. Then open the grill, give the steaks a quarter turn, and close the grill again. Two more minutes. (The point of the turn is to get that perfect grid of grill marks on the meat.) After two minutes, flip the steaks. Cook two minutes. Again, open the grill and give the steaks a quarter turn. After two minutes, remove them from the pit. If you find the steak is too rare for your liking, place it on the cool side of the grill. (See, there was a point to that!) This will allow you to get the heat without the burn. Grill to your liking, though since I don’t know how over- or undercooked your steaks are, you’re going to have to use instinct here. I believe in you. IN THE KITCHEN I live in an apartment with no balcony, so any attempt to light a grill in my home would result in the fire department chopping down my door with an ax, eviction and possibly negligent arson charges. As all three of those things happen to appear on my Do Not Want list, I am forced to use my stove. As it turns out, though, I might be ahead of the curve. When asked his favorite way to prepare a steak, Nick doesn’t hesitate to answer. “In

14 ROUSES SUMMER 2021